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03 August 2010

I had so much in my head this morning . . .

. . . i'm sure i had a lot to say, but now it is all gone. I miss my brain! I wonder if it will ever come back?

So, a few pics from around Sugarbear. :)

This is our wood pile now that it's all stacked. Only a small part of this is the right size for us to burn. The rest will have to be cut. It doesn't look as large in this pic as it looks to me when i peer out our window.

This is our new peach tree that we've just planted. So far it seems to be fine.

This is the rose bush that i cleaned out around the base on Saturday. I paid for that gardening the rest of the weekend, but i'm looking forward to having the place look a little neater. As you can see in this pic in the foreground, there is still a lot of grass needing to be pulled.

This is the rosebush i've not done anything with as of yet. Much cleaning to be done. This is a darker color than my other roses & is beautiful, but it gets its leaves & blooms much later than the others.

This is the non-fruit plum that neither Duane nor i like. I've considered cutting it down & letting the suckers (which come up green) create a bush instead of this tree. Even tho these are used a lot as ornamental, neither of us like it. Duane, being color-blind, tends to see it as black.

This is the same fruit tree, but with the sun showing thru the branches. It isn't black, of course, but somehow i still don't care for the color, although in the pics it can look stunning.

This is our apple tree. It looks healthy, doesn't it? It is, except the late freeze killed all the blossoms.

This is the only apple we have found on the tree. ONE. The tree did blossom out more after the freeze, but i don't think any of the honeybees came back & pollinated the blossoms. Maybe next year.

This is one view of Sugarbear. Everything is so green right now. That pine is in our back yard & is enormous!

This is another view of Sugarbear, with the mountains (Sugarloaf) in the background.

These are views of a type of blogger comment form. If you have these on your computer, i cannot comment. I've tried a few times. Even the ones that allow Anonymous or "Name/URL" 95% of the time will send my comments into the ether. I've given up. I don't know if anyone that visits me here has this type of "Post a Comment," but if you do, i'm not commenting there. I don't know that anyone cares, just letting you know, i've been to your blog, i've tried to comment. It doesn't like me!

Duane & i are a lot alike in many ways. That is very good for our marriage in most areas. In other ways it has its challenges. Neither of us care about food that much. Duane, when i asked him said he cares about 1. taste 2. not being hungry & 3. that it is somewhat healthy. (I think 3 would be 10 if there were more things on the list.) I guess i care more about healthy than does he, because at least some of my problems are related to a horrible diet (fast food, largely) for so long. Also, i find it really challenging that many of the things i like & could eat over & over he won't touch (& vice versa). Also, i am really fighting the feeling of resentment that if we are going to eat a home cooked meal, i have to do it. Since neither of us like to cook or care that much about food, default has fallen to me & i'm having a hard time not being angry about that. And i'm struggling with the fact that there are more & more things i can't eat. Being that limited is frustrating, especially when trying to create something for us both.

We talked about it today & came up with a compromise. We are, for the next 8 weeks, going to commit to making one meal together every week. What (he) we would like to eat & would like to cook. After 8 weeks we will re-assess the situation & make adjustments based upon the results. (I'm hoping that we will do more than one meal a week, but we will see.) Also we discussed stuff that can be cooked (by him, or by me, or by Nina) that can then be frozen & he can eat that will be simple but he can do it himself. We did not discuss, but we should, of setting a time to eat a first meal, probably 11.30. We both have the tendency to wait until 2 or 3 to eat at all, & by then we are starving & not choosing good, healthy, or otherwise, only quick.

I know to anyone who is used to a schedule & eats regularly this would seem very strange & a no-brainer, but, well, that is not us. Duane ate either frozen, microwaved stuff, or his mother cooked. That she expects me to cook ("Kathryn, Duane's home, make him a sandwich") is starting to really bug me. I could say lots about this, but it simply comes down to this: Something has to change.

Whether that change becomes not caring about the health of the food & simply eating convenience, microwave stuff (not likely to happen) or we begin to eat 90% of our meals out (also probably not likely), something has got to give. Hopefully our experiment will work.

Sunday night i made the pasta/broccoli/Alfredo sauce again. But i tried a new recipe. It was made with cream cheese & it was much easier, but it didn't have the flavor the first one (over which i was so frustrated & nearly threw the pot across the room). If i had made the easy one first, i would have said, "This doesn't taste like much, i might as well buy it pre-made (organic) from the store." But the first one was so good, i think we are likely to try it again - BUT with cooperation in taking turns stirring it because it takes a long time.

It's been a long day. I still have the migraine that started Sunday. The doc i work with adjusted me today, but it hasn't helped much. I used to do Pepsi for a migraine, but i've stopped doing conventional soda 100%. Then i tried Starbucks Vanilla Frappuccino, (Starbucks in cans has horrible, awful stuff in it but the one in the glass jar surprisingly has pretty good stuff - i.e. sugar instead of HFCS & actual milk but minimal chemicals) but i decided that was not a good choice either. So i've been trying to "tough it out" but it isn't helping much. I may break down & get the Starbucks tonight.

4 comments:

Hi Kathryn, like your yard and trees. I wish I could grow plum, peaches and apples, but our tropical clime won 't allow it.

These trees are found in our hilly regions and we get fruit from there which is very expensive.

I have trouble with that type of comment box. The way to get around it is to first sign in to your own blog. Visit other blogs after signing into your own blog by going to your dashboard. That makes commenting easier.I don 't like commenting in comment boxes which ask you to fill in your email IDs etc everytime you wan t to comment. That puts me off. I think everyone should use a user friendly comment box.

Sorry about your food issues. It made me smile too because in the US you all have so many options, we don 't have here. Each region has its traditional cuisine and people generally follow that. But of course thos e with allergies and health problems have to be extra careful. I know you struggle with that.

Yeah I care about healthly food more than taste. Then I have to consider my Mom 's dietry needs too. She can 't eat spicey stuff and her food has to be soft, so I end up eating a geriatric diet too.Ha-ha-ha.

It looks pretty dry out there. We have to get wood for the winter yet, and we usually have a lot by this time of year. but the hubby has been gone a lot. We usually get logs in and cut it up ourselves but I think this is going to be one of those years we have it delivered already cut!

I would love to have the option to have a fire going in my house! I would also love to have a peach tree. I saw some at the farmer's market yesterday and wanted to buy them.

As far as the comment boxes, I would agree with signing into Blogger first and then visiting other's blogs. Give it a try. Honestly, I didn't know that we could control how people leave comments except to have a security word. I only do that so I don't have spammers.

Hi Amrita - i wish you lived closer to the mountains - you'd have a cooler climate & more opportunity for fruit. I guess each region has its better parts, there are lots of things we can't grow where we live, they take too long of a growing season or whatever.

Thanks for the suggestions. What i'm finding, for whatever weird reason, is that Blogger WON'T keep me signed in any more. It used to, but every time i get ready to post anymore it requires me to sign in again. Firefox has been doing weird things for me, even with the new updates. I can't play Youtube videos anymore, i have to open Chrome or Safari to view them. I could switch to Chrome or Safari, but i'd have to make some other changes. Maybe, eventually, i can have Duane help me figure it out, but for now Blogger simply won't keep me signed in & so i cannot comment at the places that use this form.

Lisa hi! It is very dry here. I think i'll do a post on that. We've talked about cutting our own wood, but the only thing available is pine & that isn't the best choice for burning much. So we had 3 cords delivered last fall. We didn't use the stove much last winter.

Good AM Kathi. :)

I'd miss a fire a lot, tho we didn't use it much last winter. I bet peaches would do well in the Portland area. I remember the blackberries there that grow wild.

I've found that putting moderation on posts older than 5 or 7 days seems to take care of the spammers for me. They seem to come into the same two posts that are very old. So if you ever read my stuff older than about a week, i'll have to "approve" it. I go thru phases where i'm being spammed two or three times a day for a week or so, & then nothing for a long time.

Like i said, Blogger doesn't like me i guess, because it won't keep me signed in. I simply cannot comment at the type of post i mentioned, but that's probably not a huge loss. :)